By Kevin D. McNeir
Special to the AFRO
Narcan serves as a name brand version of a nasal medication used to quickly reverse an opioid overdose. And with the number of overdoses continuing to rise throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools is considering allowing students aged 16 and older to carry Narcan, or Naloxone, at school. The move would count as a revision to the current policy that deals with student medication.
The revisions, prompted at the request of Superintendent Aaron Spence, were discussed Aug. 22 by the Student Services Committee and includes a section about the proper training, storage and handling of Naloxone and requires students to alert a staff member if they use it on someone.
According to Student Health Services Supervisor Jeannie Kloman, in order to be trained to carry Naloxone, students have to be at least 16. Kloman said the training and the dose of Naloxone given at the end of training is free and doesn’t cost the division anything. Student Services Director Kirk Dolson said the training would be provided only to students who volunteered to take it.
For now, only a handful of staff members in division schools are trained to administer Naloxone, including principals and nurses but those from the Sheriff’s Office, the Leesburg Police and other divisions including Fairfax and Arlington in Virginia and Montgomery County in Maryland, have varied policies that allow it in one way or another.
The committee will address the policy changes at its next meeting in September. The current policy came under fire last October after nine suspected student opioid-related overdoses involving fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine, occurred at Park View High School. Seven of those happened within the span of three weeks, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.
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